Threatened Animal Update: The Good, the Bad and, Well, There’s a Lot of Bad
With about 1.7 million described species on the planet and about 20,000 new species discovered each year, it's nearly impossible to keep up with how all our fellow Earth-dwellers are faring. But that's exactly what the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has been doing since 1963. Since then, the IUCN has assessed the conservation status of around 70,923 species, including virtually all known mammals and birds and a healthy dose of amphibians.
Now the IUCN has just released its latest update on their well known Red List, and as might be expected the results range from hopeful to downright scary.
Let's start with the good news. Despite the threats posed to amphibians by a changing climate and the deadly Chytrid fungus, the discovery of several new subpopulations of the Costa Rica Brook Frog and the Green-eyed Frog in Costa Rica are giving scientists hope that these frogs aren't on their way out after all.
Overall, however, amphibians still remain one of of the world's most endangered classes. About 41 percent of all amphibians are threatened according to the IUCN Red List.
Continuing along this less cheery note, the Cape Verde Giant Skink, the Santa Cruz Pupish and the freshwater shrimp Macrobrachium leptodactylus have been officially categorized as extinct. In addition, the update saw 715 species added to the unenviable categories of Vulnerable, Endangered, and Critically Endangered. These newcomers join over 20,000 other species already in dire straits.
One troubling trend had to do with freshwater species. This year's update included the first ever evaluation of freshwater shrimp species, which occluded that 28 percent of them were threatened.
"The freshwater shrimp data further confirm what we know from analyses of other animal groups: freshwater species are among the most threatened with extinction due to the dams, channels, pollution, and introduced exotic species in those ecosystems," says Mary Klein, president and CEO of the science non-profit NatureServe.
"The overall picture is alarming," says Jane Smart, Global Director of the IUCN Biodiversity Conservation Group. "We must use this knowledge to its fullest—making our conservation efforts well targeted and efficient—if we are serious about stopping the extinction crisis that continues to threaten all life on Earth,"
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